India questions deportation of Indian students from US

Washington: India questioned the deportation of some students from India when they came to the US with valid student visas to study at two Silicon Valley institutions which have denied being “blacklisted.

“There is definitely a glitch within the US system”, sources said pointing out that the US consulate in Hyderabad issued F-1 student visas and they carried the requisite I-20 forms issued by the educational institutions certifying their admission.

The Indian Embassy here has taken up the matter with the State Department, the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security. Their response is still awaited.

Sources also said that a couple of Indian consular officers who had gone to the San Francisco airport were not allowed to meet the Indian students who had been denied entry to the US and put back on flights to India.

On reports that some students had been denied entry because they had failed to satisfactorily answer immigration officers’ questions at the port of entry, sources said there could be one or two such cases, but wholesale deportation of students pointed to a problem in the US system itself.

The sources also pointed out that the 14 Indian students from India who were deported last week and 19 others not allowed to board their Air India flights to San Francisco had all sought admission to Silicon Valley University (SVU) in San Jose and Northwestern Polytechnic in Fremont.

The two schools, meanwhile, asserted that they had not been “blacklisted” and US Customs and Border Protection officers were just implementing stricter screening security measures, which are not specific to their students, but to all international students entering the US.

Advising all new and returning students to bring original documentation, SVU said, “there were rumours reported by the media in India stating that SVU is being targeted by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).”

This, it said, was “Due to the fact that there were some new SVU students being removed or deported back to India because they were not able to answer the questions adequately to the satisfaction of the inspectors at the port of entry.”

SVU said it did not “welcome those who intend to abuse their F-1 VISAs and have other intentions besides studying in our university.’

NPU president Peter Hsieh assured “students, families, and friends” that “my team and I are deeply concerned and doing our best to clear NPU’s name and fight for your rights.”

As “definitive proof that NPU is NOT blacklisted,” it provided “evidence of a sample of new students that continue to enter the US with F-1 visas with NPU as the designated school.”

“The samples show entry on the December 20, 21 and 22, which are all dates after the false information reported in the media in India,” it said.

Students flew on Emirates, Etihad, and Singapore Airlines, NPU said claiming “Most students had to go through secondary inspections, but a few did not (only 5 minutes of questioning).”

It had also demanded that Air India allow all NPU students to board and will contact any airline that causes such problems for our students.

It had also contacted US immigration officials and were seeking officials and media in India.

“We have learned that a small percentage of international students are being sent back to India, but only those that fail their immigration interviews,” NPU said.(Arun Kumar, IANS)

FILE - Christian, from Honduras, recounts his separation from his child at the border during a news conference at the Annunciation House,in El Paso, Texas, June 25, 2018. VOA

A U.S. judge Thursday appeared open to ordering the government to find potentially thousands of additional children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, which could greatly expand the scope of a lawsuit challenging the separations.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego called a January report by an internal government watchdog that found the U.S. government had started implementing its policy of separating families months before it was announced “a very significant event.”

The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a report published earlier this year that the agency had identified many more children in addition to the 2,737 included as part of the class action lawsuit challenging family separations brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year.

Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego, July 17, 2018. Sabraw, who ordered children be reunited with their families after being separated at the US-Mexico border, may order the government to expand the scope of the reunifications. VOA

ACLU wants all families reunited

In response to the lawsuit, Sabraw ordered the families identified through a court process to be reunited with their children.

The ACLU has petitioned the judge to expand the class to force the government to do a full accounting of any additional separated children.

The premise of the class action lawsuit, Sabraw said, was the “overarching allegation of the unlawful separation” of families by the Trump administration.

“When there’s an allegation of wrong on this scale, one of the most fundamental obligations of law is to determine the scope of the wrong,” he said. “It is important to recognize we are talking about human beings.”

The administration of President Donald Trump implemented a “zero tolerance” policy to criminally prosecute and jail all illegal border crossers, even those traveling with their children, leading to a wave of separations last year. The policy sparked outrage when it became public, and the backlash led Trump to sign an executive order reversing course June 20, 2018.

In light of the Inspector General’s findings, as well as investigative reporting, Sabraw said, the current June 26, 2018, cut-off date for cases to be part of the lawsuit becomes “very arbitrary.”

‘Other galaxy of a task’

Department of Justice attorney Scott Stewart argued that the ACLU’s request to expand the class would blow the case into an “other galaxy of a task.” The government has argued in court papers that it is too labor intensive to find children who were separated and subsequently released to sponsors before the court order last year.

While most of the outrage last year focused on the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy, the government has continued to separate families on a smaller scale.

In a filing Wednesday, the government said it had separated 245 children at the border between June 26, 2018, and Feb. 5, 2019. The government said 92 percent of these children were separated because of “parent criminality, prosecution, gang affiliation, or other law enforcement purpose.”

Advocates say there is little transparency about the criteria and evidence used to justify ongoing separations. (VOA)